Ask yourself: Have you been kind today?

NO MORE STRUGGLE

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone — even alcohol.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 84

When A.A. found me, I thought I was in for a struggle, and that A.A. might provide the strength I needed to beat alcohol.  Victorious in that fight, who knows what other battles I could win.  I would need to be strong, though.  All my previous experience with life proved that.  Today I do not have to struggle or exert my will.  If I take those Twelve Steps and let my Higher Power do the real work, my alcohol problem disappears all by itself.  My living problems also cease to be struggles.  I just have to ask whether acceptance—or change—is required.  It is not my will, but His, that needs doing.

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Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day

We're all looking for the power to overcome drinking. When we alcoholics come into A.A., our first question is: "How do I get the strength to quit?"  At first it seems to us that we will never get the necessary strength.  We see older members who have found the power we are looking for, but we don't know the process by which they got it. This necessary strength comes in many ways.  Have I found all the strength I need?

Meditation for the Day

You cannot have a spiritual need that God cannot supply. Your fundamental need is a spiritual need, the need for power to live the good life.  The best spiritual supply is received by you when you want it to pass on to other people.  You get it largely by giving it away.  God gives you strength as you pass it on to another person.  That strength means increased health; increased health means more good work, and more good work means more people helped.  And so it goes on, a constant supply to meet all spiritual needs.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that my every spiritual need will be supplied by God.  I pray that I may use the power I receive to help others.

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Thought for Today

"Ask yourself: Have you been kind today? Make kindness your daily modus operandi and change your world."

--Annie Lennox


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Buddha/Zen Thoughts

If happiness hasn't been recognized when alone, a group of people will be a cause of distraction.

-Adept Godrakpa, "Hermit of Go Cliffs"

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Native American

"Everything's so simple, and we make everything so complicated. That's why we're confused."
--Vickie Downey, TEWA/Tesuque Pueblo
The Creator designed a very simple set of Laws for us to follow. If we follow these simple things, we'll be happy. If we don't follow these simple things, our lives become complicated. For example:
Respect Mother Earth
Love one another
Be truthful
Give to your brother and sisters
Be gentle with each other
Be happy
Following these simple Laws will have great rewards.
Great Spirit, let me lead a simple life.

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Keep It Simple

If anything, we have tended to be people who wanted it all now. To hope is not to demand.  --- On Hope

Maybe we were a bit demanding. Maybe we were a bit impatient. Maybe that’s why we had such little hope.
Hope is believing good will come even in bad time. Hope is knowing that “this, too, shall pass.”
Hope is knowing that no matter how afraid we are, God will be with us. Hope is knowing we never
have to be alone again. It is knowing that time that time is on our side. Hope is giving up control. Hope is knowing we never had control in the first place. Hope is believing in ourselves. Hope is what our program is all about.

Prayer for the Day:  Higher Power, in our program we share our experiences, our strengths, and our hopes. Thank you for giving all three of these to me to share.

Action for the Day:  I will share my hope for the future with myself, my Higher Power, and my friends. I also will share this with someone who has lost hope.

Visit us at Friendship House.
 

Thank God For Everything That Happens In Your Life

MYSTERIOUS WAYS

.  .  .  out of every season of grief or suffering, when the hand of God seemed heavy or even unjust, new lessons for living were learned, new resources of courage were uncovered, and that finally, inescapably, the conviction came that God does "move in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 105

After losing my career, family and health, I remained unconvinced that my way of life needed a second look.  My drinking and other drug use were killing me, but I had never met a recovering person or an A.A. member.  I thought I was destined to die alone and that I deserved it.  At the peak of my despair, my infant son became critically ill with a rare disease.  Doctors' efforts to help him proved useless.  I redoubled my efforts to block my feelings, but now the alcohol had stopped working.  I was left staring into God's eyes, begging for help.  My introduction to A.A. came within days, through an odd series of coincidences, and I have remained sober ever since.  My son lived and his disease is in remission.  The entire episode convinced me of my powerlessness and the unmanageability of my life.  Today my son and I thank God for His intervention.

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Twenty-Four Hours A Day

A.A. Thought for the Day

A.A. also helps us to hang onto sobriety. By having regular meetings so that we can associate with other alcoholics who have come through that same door in the wall, by encouraging us to tell the story of our own sad experiences with alcohol, and by showing us how to help other alcoholics, A.A. keeps us sober. Our attitude toward life changes from one of pride and selfishness to one of humility and gratitude. Am I going to step back through that door in the wall to my old helpless, hopeless, drunken life?

Meditation for the Day

Withdraw into the calm of communion with God. Rest in that calm and peace. When the soul finds its home of rest in God, then it is that real life begins. Only when you are calm and serene can you do good work. Emotional upsets make you useless. The eternal life is calmness and when you enter into that, then you live as an eternal being. Calmness is based on complete trust in God. Nothing in this world can separate you from the love of God.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may wear the world like a loose garment. I pray that I may keep serene at the center of my being.

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NA - Just for Today

True courage

Page 79

"Those who make it through these times show a courage not their own."

Basic Text, p. 86

Before coming to NA, many of us thought we were brave simply because we had never experienced fear. We had drugged all our feelings, fear among them, until we had convinced ourselves that we were tough, courageous people who wouldn't crack under any circumstances.

But finding our courage in drugs has nothing to do with the way we live our lives today. Clean and in recovery, we are bound to feel frightened at times. When we first realize we are feeling frightened, we may think we are cowards. Were afraid to pick up the phone because the person on the other end might not understand. We're afraid to ask someone to sponsor us because they might say no. We're afraid to look for a job. We're afraid to be honest with our friends. But all of these fears are natural, even healthy. What's not healthy is allowing fear to paralyze us.

When we permit our fear to stop our growth, we will be defeated. True courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the willingness to walk through it.

Just for Today: I will be courageous today. When I'm afraid, I'll do what I need to do to grow in recovery.

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Thought for Today



"Every night I go to sleep and I'm grateful for my life, and I wake
up and I feel the same thing.
I just accept everything as it is -- whatever happens is what I'm
supposed to deal with."

--Ellen DeGeneres



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Buddha/Zen Thoughts



Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.

The Buddha meditated for six years, Bodhidharma for nine. The practice of meditation is not a method for the attainment of realization—it is enlightenment itself.

-Zen Master Dogen, "The Practice of Meditation"



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Native American



"By listening to the inner self and following one's instincts and intuitions, a person may be guided to safety."

--Dr. A.C. Ross (Ehanamani), LAKOTA

Be still and know. The Medicine Wheel teaches the four directions of inner power-not personal power, but the power of God. These four directions are emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual. As our emotions get too far our of control, we simultaneously create an equivalent mental picture, our physical body fills with stress and tension, and we become spiritually confused. When we experience these uptight feelings, the best thing to do is mentally pause, slow down our thinking, breathe slowly, or pray and ask the spirits to help. Only when we approach the stillness of the mind do we get access to our spiritual guidance system. To be guided, let your mind be still.

Creator, today, let me reside in Your stillness.

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Keep It Simple



 Skill to do comes of doing.  ---  Ralph Waldo Emerson


Often, we just want to sit and do nothing. And why not. We go to meetings, work the Twelve Steps, read, make new friends. All this takes energy and means taking risk. Haven't we earned the right to just sit and take it a break from it all? No! In the past, we avoided life. Now we're becoming people of action. We take risk. We're becoming people who get involved in life. We practice caring about people and caring about ourselves. At times, we may complain, but we do what is needed to stay sober. We gain skills by doing. why? We do it to save our lives. How? By trusting. We now trust that our Higher Power and friends will be there for us. They will help us push past our fears. As we practice daily how to stay sober, our skills grow.


Prayer for the Day:  Higher Power, Yours is a spirit of action. Allow me to become skilled at being active.


Action for the Day:  Today, I'll work at being active and alive. Maybe I'll start a new friendship or try a new meeting.

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Big Book

Chapter 1  BILL'S STORY  (pg 4)

    Abruptly in October 1929 hell broke loose on the New York stock exchange. After one of those days of inferno, I wobbled from a hotel bar to a brokerage office. It was eight o'clock-five hours after the market closed. The ticker still clattered. I was staring at an inch of the tape which bore the inscription XYZ-32. It had been 52 that morning. I was finished and so were many friends. The papers reported men jumping to death from the towers of High Finance. That disgusted me. I would not jump. I went back to the bar. My friends had dropped several million since ten o'clock-so what? Tomorrow was another day. As I drank, the old fierce determination to win came back.
    Next morning I telephoned a friend in Montreal. He had plenty of money left and thought I had better go to Canada. By the following spring we were living in our accustomed style. I felt like Napoleon returning from Elba. No St. Helena for me! But drinking caught up with me again and my generous friend had to let me go. This time we stayed broke.
    We went to live with my wife's parents. I found a job; then lost it as the result of a brawl with a taxi driver. Mercifully, no one could guess that I was to have no real employment for five years, or hardly draw a sober breath. My wife began to work in a department store, coming home exhausted to find me drunk.

Come visit us at Friendship House

_________________

Many of us Believed Surrender was a Sign of Weakness

WEEDING THE GARDEN

The essence of all growth is a willingness to make a change for the better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entails.

AS BILL SEES IT,  p. 115

By the time I had reached Step Three I had been freed of my dependence on alcohol, but bitter experience has shown me that continuous sobriety requires continuous effort. Every now and then I pause to take a good look at my progress.  More and more of my garden is weeded each time I look, but each time I also find new weeds sprouting where I had thought I had made my final pass with the blade.  As I head back to get the newly sprouted weed (it's easier when they are young), I take a moment to admire how lush the growing vegetables and flowers are, and my labors are rewarded.  My sobriety grows and bears fruit.

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Twenty-Four Hours A Day

A.A. Thought for the Day

Having surrendered our lives to God and put our drink problem in His hands doesn't mean that we'll never be tempted to drink.  So we must build up strength for the time when temptation will come.  In this quiet time, we read and pray and get our minds in the right mood for the day. Starting the day right is a great help in keeping sober.  As the days go by and we get used to the sober life, it gets easier and easier.  We begin to develop a deep gratitude to God for saving us from that old life.  And we begin to enjoy peace and serenity and quiet happiness.  Am I trying to live the way God wants me to live?

Meditation for the Day

The elimination of selfishness is the key to happiness and can only be accomplished with God's help.  We start out with a spark of the Divine Spirit but a large amount of selfishness.  As we grow and come in contact with other people, we can take one of two paths.  We can become more and more selfish and practically extinguish the Divine Spark within us, or we can become more unselfish and develop our spirituality until it becomes the most important thing in our lives.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may grow more and more unselfish, honest, pure, and loving.  I pray that I may take the right path every day.

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Thought for Today

"Set up as an ideal the facing of reality as honestly and as cheerfully as possible."

--Dr. Karl Menninger
 

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Buddha/Zen Thoughts

A person of wisdom should be truthful, without arrogance, without deceit, not slanderous and not hateful. The wise person should go beyond the evil of greed and miserliness.

Do not get excited by what is old, do not be contented with what is new. Do not grieve for what is lost or be controlled by desire.

-Sutta-nipata, translated by H. Saddhatissa

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Native American

"My father told me that Hopi earth does contain my roots and I am, indeed, from that land. Because my roots are there, I will find them."

--Wendy Rose, HOPI/MIWOK

Everything that comes from the earth will return to the earth. We should be able to realize the connectedness to the earth. We should be able to feel toward Her just like She is our real Mother. We can easily feel this connectedness if we can answer these three questions: why am I?, who am I?, and where am I going? If we cannot answer these questions, then perhaps we need to talk to the Elders. go to the Elders and ask, "Grandfather, why am I?; Grandmother, who am I?; Oh Great One, where am I supposed to go?" The Elders will help us with these three questions.

Grandfather, help me to stay centered today.

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Keep It Simple

 Better bend than break.  ---  Scottish proverb

Our program is based on bending. We call it "surrender." We surrender our self-will to the care of God. We do what we believe our Higher Power want us to do. We learn this as an act of love.
Many of us believed surrender was a sign of weakness. We tried to control everything. But we change as we're in the program longer and longer. We learn to bend. We start to see that what is important is learning. We learn to do what's best for us and others. To learn, we need an open mind. To bend, we must stay open. Love and care become the center of our lives.

Prayer for the Day:  Higher Power, teach me that strength comes from knowing how and when to bend.

Action for the Day:  Today, I'll check myself. How open am I? Do I bend when I need to?

BROTHERS IN OUR DEFECTS

We recovered alcoholics are not so much brothers in virtue as we are brothers in our defects, and in our common strivings to overcome them.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 167

The identification that one alcoholic has with another is mysterious, spiritual---almost incomprehensible.  But it is there.  I "feel" it.  Today I feel that I can help people and that they can help me.
   
It is a new and exciting feeling for me to care for someone; to care what they are feeling, hoping for, praying for; to know their sadness, joy, horror, sorrow, grief; to want to share those feelings so that someone can have relief.  I never knew how to do this---or how to try.  I never even cared.  The Fellowship of A.A., and God are teaching me how to care about others.